Schenker Documents Online

Latest Material

DIARIES

The final eight months of Schenker's life are covered in a new batch that
completes the sequence from October 1917 to January 1935 — 17¼ years! Work has
now started at January 1912 and progressed to February 1913 [ed. Marko Deisinger, transl. William
Drabkin]. Not only does the latter sequence present valuable
information about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the
beginnings of the Erläuterungsausgabe, but it reveals a
Schenker engaged with social and political issues, writing mini-essays within
the diaries. — We will close the gap between 1913 and 1917 in the next three
years.

Dreams are a delightful facet of Schenker's diaries. Here he is
in 1934:
June 4: "I dream about Chopin: he sings the right-hand part of the Etude
Op. 25, No. 11, as fast as a pianist can play it, but with greater
transparency."
October 21: "Dream: Emperor Franz Joseph in his carriage amidst an
adoring crowd – from a great distance I behave as if passionately
blessed – the Emperor appears to sense my love and nods to me; he gets
out of his carriage and walks towards me, but is held up along the way
and I lose sight of him."

CORRESPONDENCE

All of the exchanges with Universal Edition for 1909 (36
items) bring the present UE coverage to 214 items spanning 1901‒09 and 1918‒30 ‒
full of fascinating shadow-boxing between Schenker and Hertzka [ed. Ian Bent]. 1910‒11 will be our target for the next
upload. New also are the correspondence with state official Ludwig Karpath (42), and the Vienna Music Academy
and its directors Bopp, Marx, et al (26) [Martin Eybl],
both including attempts to install Schenker as a professor.

The sequence of Hoboken correspondence [ed. John Rothgeb] continues, with 26 items from 1929‒32
(extending the sequence from 1924), and the first 10 items of the extraordinary
exchange with sculptor-typographer Victor Hammer [Hedi Siegel and new contributor Stephanie Probst]. Three new items to pupil Miss Newlov include the following boast from 1913:
September 25: "It is my practise to maintain the most stringent order
with all letters, correspondences, picture-postcards, [...] My
collection extends back over innumerable years, so that I have close to
20,000 letters on file. I therefore have in my possession all your letters, notes, postal order dates, in short everything, that you have written to me since I
have had the pleasure of your acquaintance." (OC 1A/27-29)
"

PROFILES

Among newly published profiles is one for the intriguing figure of Eva Boy, an "expressional dancer" (Ausdruckstänzerin) and small-time writer, for whom Anthony van Hoboken
divorced his first wife in 1932 (the couple were unflatteringly portrayed in
Lion Feuchtwanger's novel Die Geschwister Oppermann);
and the margarine manufacturer Paul Khuner, a pupil of Hans
Weisse, who contributed 5,000 Austrian shillings toward the printing costs of
Der freie Satz, an act of generosity that went
unacknowledged in Schenker's Foreword.